Good Corporate Health Now Requires Some Sweat

With Lower Absenteeism, Higher Productivity, Corporate Fitness

Centers Are Signaling ...

Arrival Of The Fittest

May 13, 1992|By GARRET CONDON; Courant Staff Writer

Count on Patty Kosis of Aetna to mark National Employee Health and Fitness day today by getting sweaty.

Actually, whatever the occasion, Kosis walks three times a week at lunchtime from her office across the street to the broad, bright, state-of-the-art fitness center in the basement of Aetna's august Farmington Avenue headquarters for a half-hour on the stair-climber, stationary bicycle or treadmill.

"My energy is higher for the rest of the day," Kosis, a training assistant in the education department at Aetna Life & Casualty Co., says during a brief treadmill break.

Healthful high energy is the stock in trade of corporate fitness centers, which have been cropping up across the country in the past decade, especially among Fortune 500 companies. The Indianapolis-based Association for Fitness in Business has 3,200 members.

In the days before astronomical health-care costs, fitness centers were reserved as perks for company managers. Today, as companies focus on "wellness" -- in part to reduce long-term health care costs -- the doors to the company health clubs are open to all. Besides healthier employees, firms are finding productivity and morale up and absenteeism down among their fitness center members.

"You have moved from a perk to a health-cost containment strategy," says Frank Frangione, a professor of physical education and health-fitness studies at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain and director of fitness at Stanley Works in New Britain. He says companies are interested in the well-being of their employees and are now focusing carefully on health issues.

Hartford's corporate workout centers do a better-than-average job of enticing employees to get fit, says C. Annie Goranson, a Springfield College professor who studied corporate fitness centers nationwide as part of a doctoral dissertation for the University of Northern Colorado. But she faults the movement nationwide for not marketing fitness centers better to the least-healthy employees.

"In Hartford, it's working well because it's all self-contained; you don't have to leave any of those buildings. The locker rooms are awesome, and they're all state of the art," she says. "And they all have high-level corporate support."

The issue of the locker room is not trivial. Convenience, cost and boardroom commitment, it seems, make or break fitness centers. At Aetna headquarters, employees pay $168 a year to belong to the center. Dick Watson, manager of corporate fitness at Aetna, says that proximity to the workforce, the skill of the full-time staff and ease of use account for an enrollment rate of 40 percent -- well beyond the 15 percent to 20 percent rate Goranson found to be the average in her study. Aetna jocks get their workout togs washed overnight at the center and tossed back into their lockers.

At Travelers Corp., where downtown employees pay $300 a year to belong to an impressive two-floor fitness center at State House Square, the club provides the togs and launders them. There is even a 25-yard, four-lane lap pool and one-eleventh-mile indoor running track. Participation is an above-average 33 percent.

At other sites around Hartford -- including United Technologies Corp. (free to employees), Hartford Insurance Group ($120 a year) and CIGNA Corp. in Bloomfield ($12 the first year, $6 thereafter for lockers, showers, towels, outdoor activities and regular group classes), Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Co. ($85 a year) and Aetna's six other fitness centers in the area -- companies are actively trying to recruit employees (as well as retirees and spouses, in some cases) into a more healthful lifestyle. And if workers have fear of Lifecycles, they can instead take advantage of other wellness-related classes, from stress management strategies to handling back problems to Weight Watchers or quitting smoking.

"We've been focusing on customer service for many, many years," says Aetna's Watson, trying to explain the high rate of use. Most centers offer incentives -- from T-shirts and mugs to membership discounts -- for regular users. And if you stop coming, you're sure to get a call from the center.

"We try to make it so that we really care about them," says Lynne Larsen, a health-fitness specialist at the Connecticut Mutual center.

Does it pay? It does, indeed, according to David Snow, manager of corporate benefits research at Travelers, who completed a cost-benefits study of the firm's Taking Care employee wellness program -- which includes wellness education, communication and access to the Hartford fitness center. He used what he called an extremely conservative formula to establish a $3.40 return for every $1 invested. Health club members tend to have lower medical claims. Travelers also established that members have lower absenteeism -- in direct proportion to their level of participation -- and higher productivity.